Promoting a restaurant on social media looks easy and appealing, but demands consistent dedication. From posting on multiple networks to analyzing statistics and being responsive around the clock, it's a marketing investment that requires time, money, attention to detail, and constant change in response to platform changes. 

Fortunately, just as social media platforms have grown, so have tools to automate restaurant marketing. These tools are a boon for restaurants without a dedicated social media team. They automate various tasks, from creating ads to scheduling posts, thereby saving time and effort.

Let's look at social media tools that can help restaurants increase their online presence, engage with customers, and ultimately drive more footfalls to their establishments with the push of a button.

All-in-one social media manager's toolkit: Schedule, create and manage content

Numerous efficient social media tools empower restaurant businesses without dedicated teams to establish vibrant online presences with minimal input. These tools enable swift social campaigns that effectively engage and attract audiences.

Ocoya: Streamline Your Social Media with AI-Driven Content Creation and Multi-Platform Scheduling

Ocoya utilizes AI to create captivating content for social media. It automatically generates hashtags and synchronizes content across over 30 platforms. With its intuitive user-friendly calendar, scheduling promotions becomes a breeze. For instance, recurring specials like 'Weekday 3 pm - 6 pm happy hour deals' can be scheduled for a month, and Ocoya will handle daily posting across social networks. Moreover, Ocoya streamlines the connection between e-commerce stores and social media platforms. This means that if a restaurant wants to sell its signature pesto sauce via its Instagram account, Ocoya provides a seamless solution.

Sociamonials: Generate content with automatic RSS Feeds

Socialmonials promises to provide respite for those who are struggling with writer’s block. It helps generate content that's informative, fun, and zippy in a matter of minutes. Restaurant owners can preview how their posts will appear across Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, and more. They can also schedule a month’s worth of posts, and allow Socialmonials to handle distribution across networks. Aside from this, there are valuable insights from the tool as it highlights social posts and networks that drive the most engagement, leads, and revenue, all helping restaurants to strategize better. Socialmonials also automatically posts blog RSS Feeds to social channels, with the option to include a call-to-action for added impact.

Picmaker: Master visual content creation and social scheduling for your restaurant

Picmaker simplifies design and scheduling for everyone. It can help restaurant owners create stunning visuals, and text content, and manage scheduling posts with one tool. Restaurants will particularly benefit from features like background remover and smart resizing, perfect for posting Saturday night retro dance party photos to Instagram and Facebook. Furthermore, it’s easy to schedule posts across multiple social networks with ease.

ContentStudio: Automate and optimize your content with evergreen campaigns

ContentStudio offers a variety of pre-made templates featuring high-quality content for tweets, Instagram captions, quotes, and more, saving restaurant marketing managers hours of work that can be channeled toward other restaurant operations. Additionally, ContentStudio has autopilot social posting features like evergreen campaigns that are not time-sensitive or trend-sensitive and can be run repeatedly, and options like RSS feeds and CSV uploads.

Sendible: Advanced scheduling and creative tools for streamlined social media management

Sendible allows bulk scheduling of posts with profile tags, locations, and hashtags. For example, cafes and restaurants can use the repeat scheduling feature to post about their “Combo Meal” offer daily. With their built-in image editor, it's easy to incorporate visuals from GIPHY, Pexels, or Canva to create fun visuals.

Metricool: Optimize your social media strategy with smart scheduling and in-depth analytics

Schedule bulk content with an easy drag-and-drop feature to create a clear and concise social media calendar with Metricool. Metricool can also help restaurants determine optimal posting times because If the content is visible in the target audience's feed while they're active it's more likely to succeed. With Metricool, managing social media comments, analyzing which influencers had the most impact, and measuring performance become seamless tasks centralized in one platform.

Buffer: Simplify your restaurant's social media management with AI-enhanced content planning and publishing

Buffer streamlines content planning and publishing across various channels through a user-friendly dashboard. Ideal for restaurant owners new to social media, it simplifies social media marketing. Buffer's AI Assistant offers further efficiency by generating content, repurposing posts, rewriting copy in preferred styles, and even translating content with just one click.

High-quality content on autopilot: AI and design tools for content creation

With so many design tools out there, restaurants can now have professional-looking graphics without spending a fortune on a graphic designer or dealing with complicated software. Here are some of the tools hospitality operators can start off with:

Adcreative.ai: Harness AI to create high-performance restaurant ads across all social platforms

Adcreative.ai  generates customized creatives for various platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter, with over 180 conversion-oriented banners in seconds. This AI powerhouse taps into a wealth of over a million top-performing ad creatives, guaranteeing fabulous results every time. Adcreative also offers sales-focused texts and headlines tailored to the platform ensuring the best possible results without time investment.

Canva: Streamline design and simplify content creation with robust templates and automation

Looking for a pre-designed, powerful, and vivid fix for social media that also enables automation? Canva aids restaurants in social media marketing with its brilliant templates for Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Canva helps speed up every part of content creation and produce creatives in bulk. Canva's content planner allows easy design creation, scheduling, and publishing. Additionally, Canva also has a free video editor to help with creating short videos for social channels.

Invideo.io:  Effortlessly create customized, AI-driven videos for social media

Invideo.io is a nifty tool that takes the stress out of creating eye-catching videos, all with the input of text prompts. Yes, as easy as that! Just by typing in the topic, Invideo's AI will whip up a script, cook up scenes, throw in some voiceovers, and polish the video to perfection And the best part?  It's easy to add instructions so that the videos are customized for the target audience and the favored platform.

Veed.io: Craft polished, professional videos with advanced editing tools

Veed.io effortlessly makes sleek, professional-grade videos that make social media feeds look flawless and delicious. Filmed a Nasi-Lemak from-scratch video but missed showcasing the final, impeccably plated dish? No worries, Veed will seamlessly integrate images to perfect the video. Whether eliminating background noise, crafting subtitles, or increasing engagement, Veed ensures that content stands out with every frame.

Task automation and workflow integration platforms: Save time and automate

Managing social media is like finding oneself in a whirlpool of tasks while bouncing between different software. That’s why platforms, like Make and Zapier, automate everything, eliminating the need to repeat manual steps and simplifying social media management.

Make: Automate your restaurant's activities with no-code workflow solutions

Restaurant marketing teams can create and automate easy workflows to save time and also optimize their marketing campaigns. For example, they can kickstart their Instagram journey with a post for marketing campaigns like Mother's Day or Father's Day.  Whenever a new comment pops up on a post, Make will seamlessly generate a reply with all the details. The best part is that these templates are set and no coding is required. With Make, restaurants can even effortlessly gather their competitor's followers and media count and send them straight to a Google Sheet.

Zapier: Streamline your restaurant's digital interactions with powerful automation

Restaurants can use Zapier to streamline social marketing tasks by connecting tools, managing social calendars, and tracking customer feedback. Imagine a busy restaurant's Facebook page, regularly updated with news, photos, menu, and event details. An example of how useful Zapier is is that it helps restaurants promptly engage with guest comments, showing appreciation for customer interaction. Customizable filters prioritize important comments, ensuring the restaurant stays connected with its audience. This efficient process keeps the restaurant informed of new comments, making engaging with customers and building a strong online community easier.

Project management and organization platforms: Decluttering the social media desk

What restaurants truly need is a centralized workspace to masterfully handle every facet of their social media game. There are tools out there designed to bring in better efficiencies.

Notion: Centralize and streamline your restaurant's digital marketing workflow

Notion's Social Media templates are perfect for busy restauranteurs. By integrating their social calendar into the Notion workspace, restaurants can seamlessly access planning documents, style guides, and creative briefs, simplifying the entire process. Notion empowers restaurateurs to centralize content management, track social media campaigns, visualize strategies, and customize their workspace for optimal performance. Experience the convenience of managing all aspects of social media in one comprehensive platform.

Creating an automation workflow: Smooth like blended whisky

Restaurants can automate the workflow that goes into creating a regular social media presence by linking apps and platforms like Zapier or Make. A good example is a daily fun food quote with a relevant funny picture. Integrating different apps and leveraging the platform's automation capabilities makes this process effortless.

Here’s an example of a workflow when using Zapier or another platform:

• Utilize Zapier's trigger feature to schedule daily posts at preferred times.

• Enhance visual content using Canva or even OpenAI's DALL·E. DALL-E uses deep learning to create realistic images. It's important to note that the latest version, DALL·E 3, now respects copyright concerns, declining requests for imagery mimicking the style of living artists to avoid potential legal issues.

• Generate fun quotes and captions with the assistance of GPT-3.

• Connect the restaurant's Instagram account with Zapier for seamless scheduling and publishing of posts.

At the end of the day, it’s imperative for restaurants to thoroughly research and identify the ideal app or suite of tools that align with their social media objectives. This ensures better engagement, keeping them at the top of mind with their target audience, leading to success in their marketing campaigns, an increase in restaurant reservations, and more profits.